Quotes of the day

posted at 10:21 pm on April 24, 2014 by Allahpundit

There are new rumors going around about Cliven. We all know that with the media, words are taken out of context, meanings are twisted, and they can take anything and turn it into what they want it to be. Cliven is a good man, he loves all people, he is not a racist man. He wants what is best for everyone.

***

“I said I’m wondering if they’re better off under government subsidies,” Bundy said. “And their young women are having the abortions and their young men are in jail, and their older women and their children are standing, sitting out on the cement porch without nothing to do, you know. … And so, in my mind, I’m wondering, are they better off being slaves in that sense, or are they better off being slaves to the United States government, in the sense of the subsidies. I’m wondering. And the statement was right.”

He continued digging further, at times talking about how he thought it was worthy to wonder whether blacks were “better off” under slavery because “their men [had] something to do” and they could have been “happier at home, with their gardens and their chickens.”

“They’re not slaves no more. They seem to be slaves to the welfare system,” Bundy said. “Slavery’s about when you take away choices from people.”

“His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him,” Paul said in a statement, according to Business Insider.

“Senator Heller completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way,” Heller spokeswoman Chandler Smith said in a statement.

Both Paul and Heller have previously defended Bundy, the Nevada rancher who is in a standoff against the federal government. Heller has referred to his supporters as “patriots.”

***

“There’s nothing conservative about this man,” Scarborough said. “This is where nihilism about the federal government gets you in trouble every time.”

“This has happened before. It happened when conservatives raced blindly to put their arms around George Zimmerman, a man who gets in all these troubles. They basically pick their friends based on who their ‘enemies’ are. In this case, a lot of people in conservative media have raced to this guy’s defense. They must be feeling very exposed this morning.”

“It was so obvious that this guy was unhinged,” TIME’s Michael Crowley said. “Guys like this and Ted Nugent are doing a favor to the left, a favor to Democrats. To the extent that there are interesting, intellectually credible strains of conservative thought about limiting government authority, people like this get associated with them, and make them look ridiculous.”

***

Most Republicans and anti-government groups didn’t have any damage control to begin with — because they had never hugged Bundy in the first place. They knew better. Not because they knew anything about his racial views, but because they knew that there were better heroes for the fight against big government than a guy who wouldn’t pay his grazing fees for 20 years.

But Paul, Cruz, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry all said Bundy’s fight highlighted important issues about the power of the federal government — and Heller called Bundy’s supporters “patriots” in a TV debate last week, according to Roll Call…

“What you’ve done, if you’re a conservative, is you’ve just given the left a huge issue to use against you,” the Nevada activist said. The next time conservatives question the BLM’s tactics as an example of government overreach, the activist said, “the first question from now until eternity will be, ‘Oh, you’re a Bundy supporter.’”

***

Bundy’s comments do serious harm to the conservative brand. They confirm the worst paranoid fantasies of those predisposed to mistrust conservative broadcasters and pundits. One would think that this self-evident threat to the right-leaning media’s credibility would prompt the conservative commentariat to immediately dismiss Bundy and his dubious gripe against the BLM. But old habits die hard…

Conservatives cannot now defend Bundy’s cause while subtly and defensively denouncing his comments. A full-throated condemnation of Bundy is due. The conservative media’s crusade against the BLM’s overreach may be forever stained as a result of the figure they elevated as its champion. If those aligned with the GOP continue to entertain Bundy as a legitimate political actor, it will only further alienate minorities – without whom, conservatives will have a difficult time recapturing control of the White House.

So what is the bigger prize, conservatives? Political power and legitimacy conferred by majorities at the ballot box, or your pride which is now tied up with an individual unambiguously unsuited to the role of martyr. Do not take too long to answer.

***

First, to take the quote at face value it’s odd and sounds offensive. You’re talking about government overreach and you go into this story? Secondly, I hope no one is surprised that an old man rancher isn’t media trained to express himself perfectly. He seems to be decrying what big government has done to the black family — which big government has negatively affected not just the black family, but all families regardless of ethnicity — so perhaps he included that in his remarks against big government? I’m just trying to figure out how he even got to the point of discussing it and yes, it’s justified to have a healthy suspicion of the New York Times. I’d be more inclined to believe that the left’s outrage is genuine had it been consistent (to say nothing of Harry Reid). Notice how the NYT immediately went to the politicians involved. If Bundy is a racist, that is awful, but what exactly does that have to do with the BLM? I’ve been saying for weeks that this isn’t about one rancher. It’s about government overreach. It’s about a paramilitarized bureaucratic entity responding to collect a bill in dispute due to arguments over state ownership and open range laws. It’s about a bureaucratic entity bypassing state and local laws — which I discussed with Judge Andrew Napolitano on my program — in court procedures and law enforcement.

Does Cliven Bundy’s remark make Tommy Henderson, Raymond Yowell, Kenni Patton, and other ranchers in Nevada and north Texas racists then because they also have issues with the BLM?

***

I don’t know if Bundy’s grazing dispute has any merit. And I certainly wouldn’t subscribe to his newsletter. All I know is that he’s the latest private citizen to stand up to the government and be excoriated by the media for it. Like Kira said, it’s not about one guy. It’s about the media abusing their power to stifle dissent against government control. Just ask anybody who’s been raked over the coals for daring to complain about their health insurance. Ask Joe the Plumber. Ask Ben Carson. Ask Carrie Prejean. Ask anybody who inconveniences the left.

Critics on the left, being an ignorant bunch, may be unaware of the fact, but the example of Mohandas Gandhi is here particularly apt, given that the great man had some pretty creepy ideas about everything from race to homosexuality, for example writing that blacks aspired to nothing more than passing their time in “indolence and nakedness,” objecting to blacks’ being housed in Indian neighborhoods, etc. Americans, many of whom seem to believe that Mr. Gandhi’s first name was “Mahatma,” generally confuse the Indian historical figure, a man whose biography contains some complexity, with the relatively straightforward character from the Richard Attenborough movie. We remember Gandhi and admire him because he was right about the thing most closely associated with him. In the same way, there is more to the life of Thomas Jefferson than his having been a slave owner. The question of standing in opposition to a domineering federal government that acts as the absentee landlord for nine-tenths of the state of Nevada is only incidentally related to Cliven Bundy’s having backward views about race. Mr. Bundy’s remarks reflect poorly on the man, not on the issue with which the man is associated…

Because our political discourse is conducted at the lowest possible intellectual level, expect to hear me, Sean Hannity, and everybody else who has encouraged Mr. Bundy in his confrontation with the federal authorities to be denounced as a racist. I’ve been here before: Criticize the IRS for its abuse of power? Martin Bashir says you’re a racist. Note that Barack Obama went to Harvard? Jonathan Capehart says you’re a racist. Etc. Bill Clinton bestows the nation’s highest civilian honor on a noted and fairly nasty segregationist? Barack Obama sits for years upon years listening to racist harangues in his church? Uh . . . When it is convenient for the Left to ignore racial nastiness, it does so. That’s why Al Sharpton has a show on MSNBC, which also indulged Melissa Harris-Perry’s grotesquely racist remarks about adoption. When it is convenient to ignore something else, then racial nastiness is the only subject of conversation. This is going to be one of those times — never mind the other issues in question here.

There’s no explaining away Mr. Bundy’s remarks, and I abhor them, and am pleased that Rich Lowry and others have taken the time to address them.

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The second one was here. It knocked me across a parking lot into a brick wall when I came out of a store to go to my vehicle. The storm blew up without warning literally in the few minutes I was in the store shopping… and the tornado just formed and set down out of nowhere as I came out to go to my vehicle, then lifted again, still fully formed, and moved off in the general direction of my home.

Say, has anyone mined the FEC records yet to see who Cliven Bundy, and the Bundy Family, has made campaign donations to?
Harry Reid wouldn’t be on that list would he?

Another Drew on April 25, 2014 at 2:59 AM

Way to come out swinging like a troll there champ, however, since that is gay and liberal tactics, and not many of us conservatives have mastered thinking like a liberal, I’d hazard a guess the answer is, no.

It seems to me that Bundy is an old guy who’s lived his whole life on a ranch in the country and probably hasn’t watched much MSM over the years to keep abreast of the latest PC jargon. That doesn’t make him a racist. To discern that you have to parse his comments, look past the outdated verbiage and consider the essence of what he was trying to convey, which seems to be that welfare and slavery are both bad and he’s not sure which is worse. I don’t think he at all intended to suggest that black people should be enslaved or that the never should have been freed, rather he was trying to make an argument against welfare dependency and how it has caused great harm to black families that has percolated throughout American society. I think Bundy is guilty of being old, out of touch with pop-culture and prone to use hyperbole. I’m not convinced he’s a racist. I’m not saying he’s totally pure, but I don’t get the impression that he intended his comments to be racist in the way that his enemies are interpreting them in the harshest possible light. His enemies are trying to make it sound like he’s in favor of slavery when the evidence indicates he’s against slavery and welfare both, and that in some ways welfare is even worse. Not worse than slavery, most would probably say, (it would be interesting to see a poll), but hyperbole does not equal racism.

Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s patootie about Bundy’s thoughts on race, social welfare programs, economics, or theology. Anything beyond what he says about his ranch and operation and the grazing issue is just irrelevant.

BLM didn’t deploy a 200-man armed force because Bundy thinks welfare has been bad for blacks. And they aren’t protecting federal land which is otherwise unused or a tortoise which isn’t threatened by cattle at all, and for which BLM has issued at least two waivers in the same area to Reid cronies for developments.

And I am disappointed in purported conservative “thinkers” who say, “Bundy should have followed the law.” If he had, he would have been out of business like the 72 other ranchers who grazed these lands before the BLM started “managing” them for the benefit of Friends of Harry.

♦♦♦♦

Public lands do NOT “belong” to the government, they belong to the people. Government is supposed to manage those resources for all our benefit, not just the few. Obama has blocked ALL new energy leases, continues to block timber sales and other commercial usage.

They aren’t trying to collect “grazing fees” ten thousand times what any sane rancher might pay, they are driving them off the land to satisfy either ideological activists or corrupt cronies, or both.

If your response to government acts like this is to bend over and spread ‘em, that’s your right. But stop calling yourself “conservative.” It’s embarrassing.

It seems to me that Bundy is an old guy who’s lived his whole life on a ranch in the country and probably hasn’t watched much MSM over the years to keep abreast of the latest PC jargon. That doesn’t make him a racist. To discern that you have to parse his comments, look past the outdated verbiage and consider the essence of what he was trying to convey, which seems to be that welfare and slavery are both bad and he’s not sure which is worse. I don’t think he at all intended to suggest that black people should be enslaved or that the never should have been freed, rather he was trying to make an argument against welfare dependency and how it has caused great harm to black families that has percolated throughout American society. I think Bundy is guilty of being old, out of touch with pop-culture and prone to use hyperbole. I’m not convinced he’s a racist. I’m not saying he’s totally pure, but I don’t get the impression that he intended his comments to be racist in the way that his enemies are interpreting them in the harshest possible light. His enemies are trying to make it sound like he’s in favor of slavery when the evidence indicates he’s against slavery and welfare both, and that in some ways welfare is even worse. Not worse than slavery, most would probably say, (it would be interesting to see a poll), but hyperbole does not equal racism.

FloatingRock on April 25, 2014 at 4:22 AM

I think Bundy let the media hype go to his head…

He took the bait so to speak in waxing poetic philosophically and made a fool of himself.

Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s patootie about Bundy’s thoughts on race, social welfare programs, economics, or theology. Anything beyond what he says about his ranch and operation and the grazing issue is just irrelevant.

BLM didn’t deploy a 200-man armed force because Bundy thinks welfare has been bad for blacks. And they aren’t protecting federal land which is otherwise unused or a tortoise which isn’t threatened by cattle at all, and for which BLM has issued at least two waivers in the same area to Reid cronies for developments.

And I am disappointed in purported conservative “thinkers” who say, “Bundy should have followed the law.” If he had, he would have been out of business like the 72 other ranchers who grazed these lands before the BLM started “managing” them for the benefit of Friends of Harry.

Public lands do NOT “belong” to the government, they belong to the people. Government is supposed to manage those resources for all our benefit, not just the few. Obama has blocked ALL new energy leases, continues to block timber sales and other commercial usage.

They aren’t trying to collect “grazing fees” ten thousand times what any sane rancher might pay, they are driving them off the land to satisfy either ideological activists or corrupt cronies, or both.

If your response to government acts like this is to bend over and spread ‘em, that’s your right. But stop calling yourself “conservative.” It’s embarrassing.

Adjoran on April 25, 2014 at 4:41 AM

BLM like many of these agencies of the executive is out of control.

That said Bundy should have remained focused on the issue at hand.

This is what happens when the drive by media creates celebrities…Bundy lost his focus.

Every once in a while somebody writes an opinion piece about how it’s time for a national debate about race, and their theory about why it seems impossible to have one. The accusations against Bundy are a case in point. Instead of debating the argument that Bundy was trying to make they attack him for the way that he made it. He’s not a politician. His opinions should have no bearing on whether or not the government honors its agreement with his family to allow grazing.

I think that the destruction of American families is an atrocity, and welfare dependency is one of the biggest causes, the consequences of which has rippled through American culture and the economy for generations and will for generations to come.

When you strip away the outdated, un-PC lingo Bundy was essentially making same argument that Bill Cosby has been making.

True but why now? How did this long drawn out fight come to this and why now?

Cindy Munford on April 25, 2014 at 5:12 AM

I dunno but it could just be human nature?

Sometimes when ordinary folks become the focus of lots of people it just goes to their heads.

Bundy had what he and others saw as an important cause…when folks outside the usual circle paid attention to that cause it might have gone to his head so to speak and he decided people wanted to hear his philosophical commentary about society.

Celebrities do this sort of thing all the time…wax poetic on crapola that they assume people want to hear because most of them are insecure about their intellect anyway…and become pretentious because of the attention.

In short he was undisciplined…and might have shot himself in the foot.

It happens…especially when people are caught off guard.

The drive by media is expert at makin’ hay out of this guff.

Bundy should’ve stuck to the issue especially since the BLM killed his cattle.

Every once in a while somebody writes an opinion piece about how it’s time for a national debate about race, and their theory about why it seems impossible to have one. The accusations against Bundy are a case in point. Instead of debating the argument that Bundy was trying to make they attack him for the way that he made it. He’s not a politician. His opinions should have no bearing on whether or not the government honors its agreement with his family to allow grazing.

I think that the destruction of American families is an atrocity, and welfare dependency is one of the biggest causes, the consequences of which has rippled through American culture and the economy for generations and will for generations to come.

When you strip away the outdated, un-PC lingo Bundy was essentially making same argument that Bill Cosby has been making.

FloatingRock on April 25, 2014 at 5:10 AM

Two quotes to consider…

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

Benjamin Franklin

Both of these quotes speak to common sense discipline in the public arena.

Both Franklin and Lincoln lived in tumultuous times and were aware of how easily public commentary was manipulated for public consumption.

There’s a great poem about the west called “Out Where the West Begins”, by Arthur Chapman. You can find it online.

There’s a great book called, “Treasury of the Familiar”. It’s really old and you can only find it at garage sales. It has a lot of poems, speeches and sayings we’ve heard but don’t remember the whole of. It has an index of first lines.

My first instinct was to distance myself from Bundy. And then I thought: this reflexive taboo behavior has to end some time.

Bundy said something that was racially insensitive, ill-informed, and ill-thought out. But it’s not like he’s the best brain or spokemen we have in conservative circles. It’s not like he’s some powerful force in conservatism, other than his plight of the moment.

If Bundy said something that was racially insensitive, ill-informed, and ill-thought out. Then the part that’s different from the standard liberal statement is that the standard liberal statement is not racially insensitive.

But, from what I can see, it’s racially insensitive as a result of it’s being ill-thought. Cutting through the mounds of badly-worded, wince-able crap, we essentially find Bundy asking what level of freedom those on the government dole have, and perhaps it doesn’t have the racial animus that we could project on obvious trigger words.

The idea that black people may have been better off as slaves, does not seem to contain a consideration of whether you’re better off if somebody can beat you. Also, his claim that slaves can have “family time” runs counter to slave families being ripped apart by sales. Again, I’m not arguing that it is not insensitive and ill-informed, I’m simply arguing that I don’t see it to have the same malice that I attribute to a racist, or anybody who could have the full view of slavery in mind when they say it might have been a better situation.

I’m not a doctrinaire conservative and I’m not conservative on all my views–or at least my views are consistent with what somebody or other might find the touchstone of conservatism. But I side with conservatives, because when they use calm, deliberated reason, they often cannot be matched on the other side, or at best it’s a draw.

Since the time I stood with conservatives until now, somebody, and mainly the media, has always been trying to get a visceral reaction to a particular group of conservatives, to move me to a place where your free of the same guilt-by-association, because the left doesn’t apply that to themselves, and the rational elements on the right, also calmly distinguish between personal responsibility and guilt-by-association.

So, I caution against the urge to flinch when calm, deliberative thinking is one of the best things that conservatism has going for it. Cultivate that.

There’s a great book called, “Treasury of the Familiar”. It’s really old and you can only find it at garage sales. It has a lot of poems, speeches and sayings we’ve heard but don’t remember the whole of. It has an index of first lines.

crankyoldlady on April 25, 2014 at 6:07 AM

Ebay has a 1946 edition for $96.00

I’ll put those on my list of hunts at 1/2 price books?

I found an OED there for my Dad for $75.00 about 10 years ago. He’d wanted a complete set for years but they were too expensive…the set I found was a late 40’s edition and he was delighted by it.

It’s just one book and it isn’t worth $96. If it’s a set I’ve never seen any others. Just this one that turns up once in awhile. A used book store can look for it for you if they don’t have it. And there’s always the library.

I’m looking through it and there are so many things that have to do with the trials we’re going through now.

“The Blind Men and the Elephant” It was 6 men of Industan to learning much inclined who went to see the elephant though all of them ere blind. The idea is they all ran across different parts of the elephant and came to different conclusions about what it looked like.

“So oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen”

Most Republicans and anti-government groups didn’t have any damage control to begin with — because they had never hugged Bundy in the first place. They knew better. Not because they knew anything about his racial views, but because they knew that there were better heroes for the fight against big government than a guy who wouldn’t pay his grazing fees for 20 years.
……………………………

As far as grazing fees go the BLM started out on the farmers side. They actually helped farmers and the ranchers they helped willingly paid fees to support them. Then came the environmental Marxists. They sued the crap out of the BLM won a few times and the BLM rather than fight, just like conservatives now on Bundy, gave up and switched sides. Now they shill for the enviro wackos rather than get sued and have to fight.
…………..
Finally someone gets to the truth.
Throwing Bundy under the bus is really about November.
But November is also about Republicans refusing to stand up on anything from Boehners’ amnesty to obamacare to Benghazi to you name it. When do we stand up and say I won’t agree to that. A bridge too far.
You can count the number of outraged conservatives who openly oppose the regime on a single hand. And yes there is a Trey Gowdy every once in a while but even he had a chance to take out goober in the Senate and he passed.
We need leaders who are not afraid to come out and standup for conservative values.(Ted Cruz)
More Sarah Palins more Ben Carsons and fewer Glen Becks and Sean Hannitys who are so afraid they might lose their empires so they fold like cheap suits almost immediately before the research has even started on Bundy.
Sure I want to win in Nov. but how many standup guys or even rough speaking guys who have been wronged get thrown under the bus in the process?
That’s lefty style. Build the dead pool at any cost to preserve the dear leader.It’s not me.

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

That second type of person, the one seeking to work for the organization and not to the stated ends of it, are in control in each and every bureaucracy on the planet, bar none. At BLM those who promulgate regulations and then show they need more personnel to ‘enforce’ them, and then start saying that they need more equipment and training for doing their ‘job’ are not actually executing the law. They are expanding the organization in question so that it has more power and scope to reach outside of the narrow confines of the law that it was created to enforce.

How do you arrive with a couple of hundred well armed BLM personnel on Cliven Bundy’s doorstep? Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy has that answer: they have had long decades to keep expanding regulatory power without question, and the ‘public comment period’ for such things are a joke because they pass so many regulations that finding one in time to comment on it is impossible, and that then means they ‘need’ a larger organization to ‘cope’ with their self-expanded role. And when you get those things, those doing the weasel wording on regulations get promoted.

Those helping them get promoted and they are then the ones bringing in more personnel to the agency so there is a bias towards more type 2 people than type 1 via the hiring process.

When you are a legislator getting ‘perks’ via ‘pork’ or through the use of federal contracts from agencies that you have rewarded with more power, your family prospers. Get enough time in one of the houses and you then have a lot of clout with which to protect those agencies that are now looking to YOU for more work and expansion in size, scope and power.

That is why Big Government gets Crony Capitalist and Corrupt Legislators who can’t even abide by the very laws they pass. It isn’t about ‘doing good’ but with getting power and money. That is the brokerage going on amongst the Cronies, Bureaucrats, and Corruptocrats and the chips they use are personal freedom and liberty which they infringe no end and cannot even show a good justification for that ever widening scope of power. When you add in a Media that has bought into this cycle of corruption and authoritarianism because it, seemingly, goes to their agenda, then you have the full circle of a Media system that has bought into protecting authoritarian government and getting rewarded with tidbits so long as they never, ever do straight reporting on government caused problems and never, ever hold Bureaucrats and Legislators accountable for what is going on.

The BLM is NOT a law enforcement agency, just one with very limited scope of policing powers which are limited in circumstance. They are not a Counter-Terror organization and there are law enforcement agencies at the State and federal level to deal with those who ARE ‘domestic terrorists’… mind you those bureaucracies have the exact, same phenomena going on. The BLM is not a paramilitary organization nor any sort of military organization at all. When the BLM runs into lethal situations it is to call upon other law enforcement agencies that, presumably, KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THEM as that is THEIR JOB not BLM’s.

And if BLM is sending agents into hostile situations and getting them killed then one must ask why they continue to do that and not get the help they are required to get instead of asking for arms, armor and equipment? Perhaps they would have fewer of those situations if they didn’t promulgate so many regulations meant to harm small businesses and reward Cronies and the families of Legislators and then justify their actions to a compliant Media that sympathizes with them because they don’t like seeing people free of government intrusion in their lives because government can ‘do good’.

Yet government is, at best, a necessary evil.

When you give it good things to do, it becomes a pure evil with the power to back up its edicts.

This isn’t about Cliven Bundy, the ranching or the actual land, itself.

It is about what happens when you have a collection of interests theoretically acting in the ‘public good’ all driven by kickbacks, pay-offs, good press, viewers, and promotions for expanding the size, scope and power of government. All you need to do is look at how a bureaucracy expands, especially one in the public sphere, and see the results of lax or complicit oversight on agencies seeking to go far outside the limited duties given them. That is due to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracies. They stop acting for the things they are intended to do and, instead, act to the interest of the organization itself.

It wasn’t Southern Baptists who committed the largest act of terrorism ever perpetrated on American Soil. – KJ

kingsjester on April 25, 2014 at 6:54 AM

So it was those Evangelical Lutherans?

Seriously KJ, You ask where the Muslim voices were in the aftermath of the 9/11/01 atrocities. They were out there but most were couched the same way that CAIR responded to the terror attack. Essntially condemning the act but not condemning the terrorists. Because, don’t you know, America deserved to be attacked by supporting the Jews or something.

It comes as no surprise to me that the same folks that have no problem with Muslims building a victory mosque at Ground Zero would take issue with the “religion of peace” being mentioned in a film about the 9/11/01 atrocities.

That is due to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracies. They stop acting for the things they are intended to do and, instead, act to the interest of the organization itself.

ajacksonian on April 25, 2014 at 6:55 AM

True.

Some folks get fed up…

“As President Obama prepares to use his executive power to release thousands of felons (serving time under “racist” drug sentences) the Justice Department’s top official in charge of pardons quits rather than let criminals out of jail. [ed.- and the clemency move is not just for drug sentences, as we reported previously].

At least someone at the agency charged with enforcing the law and providing federal leadership in controlling crime, has some scruples. Of course, the official statement on the abrupt resignation of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Pardon Attorney, Ron Rodgers, is that he suddenly requested reassignment after heading the division for six years. One newswire story quotes a DOJ Deputy Attorney General saying that Rodgers’ departure is “in the tradition” of senior executive service attorneys who ask for reassignment.

The facts tell a different story. As head of the DOJ’s Pardons Office Rodgers clashed with the Obama administration over a controversial plan to release—or reduce the sentences of—convicted drug offenders. It’s part of the president’s effort to end racial discrimination in drug-related sentences. It started with the 2010 signing of a law (Fair Sentencing Act) that for the first time in decades relaxed drug-crime sentences he claims discriminate against minority offenders. The measure severely weakens a decades-old law enacted during the infamous crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged urban communities nationwide in the 1980s….”

Weasel Zippers commentary:

Notice how in his comments on this matter, Eric Holder talks about the “unfairness” of the sentences “under the old regime”. We use the term “regime”(instead of administration) to signify the sense of royal power they believe they have. And here, he absolutely claims the term, since he is now the new “regime”. No, Mr. Holder, the sentences were those imposed under law. Perhaps you just don’t recognize the difference between the law and the imperial presidency.

Mr. Rodgers was the target of a Justice Department Inspector General report in December 2012 that found that Rodgers fell “substantially short of the high standards to be expected of Department of Justice employees and of the duty he owed to the President of the United States”. The pardon attorney’s advice to the president to deny the grant of a felon, even though the prosecutor and judge supported it, “was colored by his concern … that the White House might grant Aaron clemency presently and his desire that this not happen,” the report concluded. Not wanting to grant clemency is apparently cause for reprimand, whereas breaking the law is cause for a bonus and high praise with this regime.

They’ve already selected a replacement for Rodgers. Here’s a little on that replacement, Deborah Leff, guaranteed fully on board with Obama regime initiatives.
Deborah Leff was Acting Senior Counselor for Access to Justice at the US Department of Justice, working for “outcomes that are fair and accessible to all, irrespective of wealth and status” She also was a producer for ABC. – Nickorama

ABC is reporting this morning that Obama appeared exasperated when reporters asked a slew of questions about the Middle East, Ukraine, and (of course) North Korea. The rat-eared wonder went the full schoolmarm and lectured that he didn’ have the luxury of only dealing with one crisis at a time. Well no kidding! But previous Presidents actually acted on multiple problems instead of dithering and taking a pointless trip to Asia.

I have many Muslim friends and some were born in the Middle East; some were born in the United States; and some were born in the UK. My Muslim friends who were born in the US and the UK feel the same way about 9/11 that I do. They fully denounce the act and the participants. They also fully denounce radical Islam. I know a lot of folks here view all of Islam as radical and I am not trying to change your viewpoint.

My friends from the ME are somewhat conflicted, but see themselves as being different from the 9/11 terrorists. When it comes to CAIR, for the few who even know about the organization, they just roll their eyes.

Maybe, my friends are either lying to me or are an exception to the rule. Every Christmas and Easter I get letters of celebrations, from many of my Muslim friends, even though I am not religious. They just assume that I am. They also get a kick out of my RedNeck sounding Farsi.

ABC is reporting this morning that Obama appeared exasperated when reporters asked a slew of questions about the Middle East, Ukraine, and (of course) North Korea. The rat-eared wonder went the full schoolmarm and lectured that he didn’ have the luxury of only dealing with one crisis at a time. Well no kidding! But previous Presidents actually acted on multiple problems instead of dithering and taking a pointless trip to Asia.

Happy Nomad on April 25, 2014 at 7:33 AM

HN. Whiner in chief

cmsinaz on April 25, 2014 at 7:34 AM

Cause and Effect of the perpetually Self Centered.

Obama being the narcissistic anarchist seeks to remake the world as he sees fit…and gets flustered when his Citizen of the World trolling media don’t comply.

Wanna bet that as the liberals pivot to their next historical supasta…Killary…Obama goes full throttle support for his court fool Biden?

workingclass artist on April 25, 2014 at 8:03 AM

I’m not so sure that Killary is going to be the media’s chosen one. It’s free to speculate at this point but I’ve seen the push for Faux-ca-hontus Elizabeth Warren and (really) Caroline Kennedy to run in 2016. And the only thing we need less than another Clinton or Bush is yet another goddamned Kennedy!

I welcome the idea that Joe Biden, John Kerry, or even Al Gore test the waters against all the gals who seem to be getting the upper hand since, apparently, following up on the first black President we need the first female. I guess the gays are lining up for 2024.

The word negro used to be an anthropological term, no longer in use, imagine that, that described brown to black skinned people from sub-Sahara Africa. Maybe Bundy hadn’t gotten the message yet about it no longer being in use. I understand the thought he was trying to express. Maybe if he had left the really touchy don’t go there ‘slavery’ word out of his discourse, he’d still be on the bff list of all of those on the so called right. There are generations of poor, black and white, that have been on the govt dole, so much so, that it is ingrained in their mindset and all though akin to slavery, it just ain’t acceptable to say it.

What’s up with everybody calling the dude a racist? Let’s recap what Democrats have done to black Americans in this country after the civil war. Segregation anyone? Rosa Parks say what? Margaret Sanger, Democrat and open racist who advocated abortion of black babies. All Democrats trying to keep blacks out of colleges, public schools, etc. that didn’t work, so here comes LBJ, Democrat, and the war on Poverty, the projects, welfare, etc. The sad truth of the matter is that as a community overall, a good percentage of blacks went from hard working, family oriented people to what we see in the inner cities today. Gang bangers, drug dealers, etc. Are all blacks this way? No. Are there a good number of whites and Hispanics doing the same? Yes. The sad truth is that the black community has been the one most affected by these policies.

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Canadian,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older Canadians and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen Canadians sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young Canadians to do.

One of the supporters serving as a bodyguard for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy during his standoff with federal authorities — and who also happens to be black — said he would still “take a bullet for” Bundy after the rancher made racially inflammatory comments.

CNN’s Dan Simon noticed Jason Bullock, a six-year Army veteran who serves as one of Bundy’s bodyguards, hanging around the at the Nevada ranch. Simon asked Bullock whether he found Bundy’s remarks about blacks and slavery offensive.

“Mr. Bundy is not a racist,” he told CNN. “Ever since I’ve been here, he’s treated me with nothing but hospitality. He’s pretty much treating me just like his own family.”

“I would take a bullet for that man if need be. I look up to him just like I do my own grandfather,” he added. “I believe in his cause and after having met Mr. Bundy a few times, I have a really good feel about him and I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

Well, here we are 2:11 on Fiday and HA still has not posted the fact that Bundy’s remarks were edited to make him look like a racist. He is not. And after reading his unedited remarks, I can’t find any way to paint him a racist, but the knee-jerk fair-weather conservatives at HA haven’t put his unedited remarks up yet.
Why is that? Because it will make Ed and HA look stupid because they got caught in a leftist media trap? Yes, you do look stupid. You forgot the LSM did the same thing to George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is suing them. I think Bundy has a claim as well for intentionally defamatory editing by who ever and whatever media outlet made that tape. I really hope he pursues this as a lawsuit. And you knee-jerk fair-weather conservatives at HA should be ashamed of yourselves!